Strengthening Rights For Workers

For too long, the benefits of modern work have flowed disproportionately to corporations, leaving workers juggling long hours, unpredictable schedules, and inadequate protections.

Flexible work arrangements, such as the ability to work from home, have enabled millions of workers, many of them women, to balance care responsibilities with paid work. Legislating the right to work from home, where it is sensible and doable, will not only protect women’s access to the labour market and economic equality gains, it will also increase workforce participation and ultimately boost productivity.

The Victorian Labor Government have announced they will legislate for a 1 day a week work from home entitlement, but the South Australian Government do not support the same for our state¹. 

The Greens will legislate to protect the right to work from home for 1 days per week for those SA workers whose role can reasonably and practically be performed remotely.

^{1. Source: Robert Simms MLC - https://www.robertsimms.org.au/malinauskas_out_of_touch_with_modern_workplaces_sa_greens_to_protect_work_from_home_1_day_a_week}

In Federal Parliament, the Greens secured the right to disconnect from work out of hours, unless workers are being paid for it. This right helps workers switch off and restore work life balance.

However this right does not extend to South Australian public sector workers who have been left behind. 

The Greens will extend this right to South Australian public sector workers to ensure they have the same conditions as other workers. 

Young workers should receive the same financial rights as everyone else. Currently, most workers under 20 are paid youth wages, which are less than people standing next to them doing the same work². 

The Greens believe there should be the same pay for the same work. 

We will amend the Equal Opportunity Act 1984 to remove the exemption which allows Youth Wages to eliminate financial age discrimination, and ensure anyone over the age of 16 is paid the same rate for the same work. 

^{2. Source: SDA - https://www.sda.au/campaigns/adult-age-adult-wage/}

Those who are on the front line, risk their health and life to protect us, our families and our homes. For firefighters, the risk of contracting certain types of cancer is 5-10 times higher than the general community and they have 2 to 3 times the lung cancer risk of a smoker. 

There is a list of cancers that can be considered as presumed to have been related to work for firefighters, but the United Firefighters Union is calling for the list of cancers to be increased from 12 to 20. The Greens will amend laws in line with the calls from the union.

First responders face trauma every day, including being exposed to injury and death. People attending these incidents as part of their work suffer from significantly higher rates of psychiatric injury (including post-traumatic stress disorder) than the general population³.

To claim support, first responders have to prove that their wellbeing has been caused by work and many are denied. The Greens will commit to changing the laws to create a presumption that post-traumatic stress disorder has been a result of employment for first responders. 

^{3. https://www.ufusa.com.au/ptsd-bill-passed/}

Stability of predictable and fair working hours should be a right for all workers. Unpredictable rosters disrupt people’s lives, making it harder to plan for childcare, caring responsibilities, personal time, or even basic financial stability. 

The number of gig workers has increased with the advent of new platforms such as Uber and Deliveroo, but the workplace laws have not kept up with these rapidly changing industries and business models. On-demand work is insecure and underpaid. Food delivery drivers are paid between $10-15 hours after costs⁴, and they lack the protections of workers in more secure employment. Gig workers have no access to paid leave if they are sick and have nowhere to turn when they have a dispute after unfair termination, or when experiencing contract issues⁵. 

In 2024, a parliamentary inquiry looked into the gig economy and made recommendations on how to protect gig workers from being exploited. The Greens will amend laws to provide better job conditions for casual and gig workers in line with recommendations from the inquiry, including:

Including gig workers in the definition of ‘workers’ in all state-based legislation including for workers’ compensation Require the provision of workplace health and safety standards for all gig-based workers including the provision of PPE and appropriate training for gig workers Investigating payroll tax for gig workers

^{4. Report from the Select Committee into the Gig Economy 2024}

^{5. Ibid}

In December 2023 Federal Parliament passed the Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Closing Loopholes) Bill 2023. The Greens successfully moved an amendment to create a Right to Disconnect for all Australian workers, supported by Labor. The final bill contained a raft of significant improvements for workers’ rights nationally: same job same pay, workplace safety improvements, making wage theft a crime, rights for gig workers and rights for first responders who contract cancer. 

Despite these improvements in federal law for all Australian workers, 100,000 public sector workers in South Australia remain unprotected by these laws. State-based workplace relations law has not been updated uniformly with the aforementioned federal improvements in the Closing Loopholes Bill. 

The public sector is the largest employer in SA, yet right now these workers are worse off than their private sector workmates. They are also worse off than public sector workers in Victoria, the NT and the ACT who have all referred their IR system to the Commonwealth. 

The SA Greens will close the loopholes on the Closing Loopholes Legislation via amendments to state-based workplace relations law.